Trying clothes was one of those
things that Rebecca had never really liked about going out to a mall, whether
it was with her friends or her family. She would always see something cute that
she would love to wear herself, but wouldn’t be able to bring herself to try it
on and least of all buy it. Something just prevented her from actually trying
to change, even when she really wanted to make something for her that would
maker her at least a little bit more interesting, not only for men but also for
everyone in general.
She had never been the kind to
talk to strangers or just initiate a conversation in the line of the grocery
store. It was very difficult to find the right moment and the right words and
apparently the right person to that with. And when she finally decided to do
it, people would have moved on and she would already be out, walking home or
something. Rebecca would always blame it on her being slow and not as smart as
other people, but the reality of it was, and she knew it very well, that she
was just too shy and insecure.
Her parents had tried for years
to get her out of her shell, almost pushing her to do different extracurricular
activities in order to discover things she could be good at or that could help
her relate better with people. She tried cooking and playing various sports, as
well as knitting and dancing and also horseback riding and even volunteering to
help those in need. She did all of them for some time and then quit when she
realize she wasn’t really getting anything out of any of those activities, only
frustration.
After every single failure, she
would go back home and stay in her room for hours and days, sometimes crying
for being such a weird kid but then realizing she didn’t really care about
other people and then taking on hobbies that could work with her being alone
like drawing and writing. The only things she would ask her parents to buy for
her would be pencils in every single color in existence, as well as notebooks
and, once, a better laptop to keep a copy of everything she did just in case
she needed it.
For a while, she was able to just
to that and come to school almost running in order to keep drawing and writing.
Her parents were busy most of the time so, even if they had been worried at
first because of her lack of skills with others, they soon realized that they
had to be grateful their daughter was having such safe and creative hobbies,
rather than causing problems for others or for herself. So they were happy
buying her whatever she said she needed for her arts and they never doubted her
skills again. However, it would soon be all for nothing because of the big
changes that happened afterwards.
As everyone knows, the Plague
started its expansion about a year ago and in a matter of days, several
millions had died suddenly and others had been severely deformed and turned
into creatures without a proper mind. They had no thoughts of their own,
nothing that could relate them to the people that had been before. They just
lived, if that could be called living, to wander the world and attack those
that the Plague had not killed in the first wave. The survivors moved around
often, avoiding their former families and friends.
Rebecca had been one of the few
survivors of that cataclysm. It was very strange but, for a long while, she had
been completely oblivious about the whole thing. Not only because she spent her
days in her room, drawing and writing about all the things that came into her
mind, but also because the Plague had expanded at the beginning of summer, meaning
she had less reasons to be outside or wander around town. Rebecca enjoyed the
sun more when she could be as away from it as she possibly could.
She was already seventeen when
everything happened. The day she heard shots outside and people screaming was
the first one when she realized something was going on. She had been in her
room for at least a week. Rebecca had learned to cook for herself a long time
ago, as her parents would often be at work, so she had not missed them or
needed them for anything. But the day the shots were fired, was the same day
she ran out of pages on her favorite notebook, which had a beautiful Japanese
design on the cover.
Normally, the girl would ask her
mother or father to go to the shopping mall and buy a new one but she wasn’t
able to find them at all that they. She waited at home all day but they never
came in. So she looked for their offices phone numbers and then things got even
stranger because the phone wasn’t working. It was obvious that something very
bad had happened because when night came, the lights suddenly went out and they
never came back again. She was very scared and decided to stay in her room.
She did so for a whole day until
she heard shots again and then more screams and then silence. Rebecca was terrified
and in need of her parents. It was true that she had never been really that
good with people but she realized that her parents had been essential in her
becoming at least a functional human being. She didn’t love being with them and
she felt bad for that because she knew children were supposed to love their
parents and she had never felt that. Until, she was alone. Until she had been
forced to realize how dire her situation was without them. She cried herself to
sleep that second night.
By the third day, she came down
to the kitchen and decided to pack every single piece of food she could find on
a bag. She would carry that bag to her room and then survive whatever was
happening in there. As she put everything on a suitcase that her father would often
use for business trips, she realized she had never thought on turning on the
television or the radio in order to know what was happening. She was about to
do so but then she felt stupid because the electricity had stopped working two
days ago and she knew that.
Rebecca felt very stupid and
realized filling a suitcase with crappy food was not going to save anyone from
anything. If she wanted to know what was happening, and it was probably best
that she did, it was imperative for her to step out of the house and confront
the world, once again. She climbed the stairs fast and looked out the window,
something she rarely did. There was no one on the street and no sounds could be
heard. If there was a perfect time to come out of her house, that was it.
She emptied the backpack she used
to go to school and packed in some clothes and things she would need outside
like a flashlight and batteries, some of the crappy food from the kitchen, a
Swiss army knife her father kept in a drawer and a tiny bottle of pepper spray
that her mother had indicated her on how to use, in the eventuality that a man
would try to do something inappropriate to her or someone mugged her on the
street. Of course, she had never found use for any of those things, until now.
When ready, she slowly walked
towards the front door of the house and opened the door with doubt. She was not
as scared of what might have happened in the world, as she was from the
exterior in general. She took a deep breath and slowly but surely walked beyond
the front side of her house. Rebecca stopped for a moment and looked behind, wondering
if she would ever go back there but she knew it was better not to ask too many
questions, at least when she was so insecure about everything in the world.
Rebecca started walking again
and, in minutes, she was deep inside her neighborhood. Contrary to a normal day
of summer, the streets were very empty and the sun was only heating up the cars
that had been left outside. There were no corpses to see, so she was
optimistic.
She stopped being that when she
got to the supermarket her family visited. A group of people was gathered in
front of the door. She doubted for a minute but then, knowing she had to be
brave, she yelled at them. She had vanquished part of her fears, just as a
bunch of zombies looked at her, licking their dry lips.
